Dec
01

I’ve become a statistic

Years ago, I was told that only 1 in 10 blogs would last more than a month.  I was proud of the fact that I had stuck it out for two months at the time.  Now, I’m proud to say that I’ve been blogging regularly (or at least fairly regularly) for more than 3 years now.

I started as a quick, semi-weekly blog about things I was studying in business school.  Then I posted marketing case studies, hypothetical situation reviews, and strategy critiques.  Then I tried to go even deeper with a set weekly schedule that I couldn’t keep up with.  Most recently, I started again striving for 3 posts per week about my faith, my personal life, and the works that drive my professional ambitions.

As you can see by the embarrassing lapse in my posting schedule, I let more than a month go by in between my last WordPress post and Monday’s post on the Postel’s Law as applied to Christianity.

I could bore you with a new update schedule now.  I could ramble on about how I won’t let this kind of lapse happen again.  I could promise posts every day for the rest of the year.  I could solicit post ideas from Twitter and Facebook.  I could do all sorts of things to reinvigorate this site.

But I’d likely fail at all of them. [Read more...]

Dec
30

A Great 30 Days

Today marks my 30th consecutive post in the 30 Days of Blogging series.  That’s more than 9,000 words written and published over the past month without missing a single update.  Considering where I started with my blogging talents several years ago (I used to hand-code posts maybe once a month when I got bored), I see this as quite an accomplishment! [Read more...]

Dec
29

Automation

Lately, I’ve found myself responding to several advertisements on Craigslist.  There seem to be a lot of people who could benefit from my services, and I take the time to respond to each of their listings with a customized note explaining what I can do to help and the best ways to contact me.  The other day I even put my own listing up on a similar website in an attempt to solicit collaboration from the WordPress development community.  I realize now that both of these services might not be the best in the world. [Read more...]

Dec
28

Productization

As a consultant, I’m realizing more and more the value of “productizing” a service.  At the moment, everything I do is bid for piecemeal and is thus negotiable.  I set a target for my hourly salary and bid on projects such that I can meet that while still paying other necessary business expenses (software licenses, sub-contractors, etc).  Such an ambiguous pricing model eventually finds me charging one fee for one client, and a different fee for another. [Read more...]

Dec
27

Goal Setting

As tomorrow starts the final week of 2009, I thought it advantageous to briefly discuss the objectives of setting goals, both for yourself and your business.  Most of you are familiar with New Year’s resolutions, but few of us regard these as more than a passing fancy.  Really, we set resolutions as if they’re cold-turkey life changes that will take place magically on January 1st.  They’re anything but that. [Read more...]

Dec
26

The Morning After

Once again, the morning after a major holiday is littered with early wake-ups and demonstrations of mass consumerism at its worst.  As a marketer I should be excited that so many people are buying in to my industry’s messaging.  In reality, though, I’ve never quite understood or respected the post-holiday purchasing bender. [Read more...]